My Blackberry user friends have all chuckled when I complain about my iPhone woes, and clearly I’m not the only one (see Apple’s discussion: forum: iPhone 3G Reception Problems? You’re Not Alone and C-NET’s coverage roundup here) . This makes my Blackberry friends happy, turns out their not-so-sexy phone is coming out to be a good tried-and-true reliable: the Volvo of the mobile world?* But iPhone owners seem to have an unusually high level of forgiveness for this phone.

In the midst of Apple’s stock dive and rumors of Jobs’ heart attack, I’m yet to find an iPhone owner that really dislikes their phone and has returned it. Yes, I’ve seen a few pictures of smashed iPhones, but for the most part they seem to be treated with the love and care of a fine jewel, or a hot-princess girlfriend (or boyfriend) that we feel lucky to have in spite of the obvious short-comings. The general consensus is that the keyboard is not nearly as usable as the Blackberry, but then the general response is: “you’ll get used to it.” As for the dropped calls, people respond with a resigned tone “yes, I still drop calls, but it’s no so bad anymore… but I the app store is great!”

There is no doubt that iPhone challengers are coming out fast, and there’s definitely opportunities to bust iPhone’s pedestal. But make no mistake, this is not a rational space anymore. Yes, we want a functional phone, but the race is turning more about the phsychological love-obsession for these gadgets than the actual functionality. Therefore we should pay attention (once again) to brand cults. Check this insightful graph from Alex Wipperfürth How Cults Seduce and What Marketing Can Learn From Them*. Sound familiar?

As for me, I’m giving my iPhone another 10 days or so, sort of an ultimatum with the dropped calls. Apple suggested I turn off the 3G unless I’m using the internet. So, I am trying to show my commitment by paying for a few apps and giving it a real chance.

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* Volvo comparison came from Philip Miner, and I found the article thanks to Brand Autopsy

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6 Comments

Brook Ellingwood says:October 5, 2008 at 4:49 pm

All I know is that my iPhone is everything my old Palm Treo 650 claimed to be but never was, plus much, much more. It’s not 3G and I’ve never had any problems with dropped calls when I’ve been within the bounds of civilization. Of course it annoys me sometimes, but all cell phones are annoying, as is all technology. The trick is to pick technology that has an annoyance/benefit balance that works for you.

I’m still wresting with having been accused (in a friendly way) of being an Apple fanboy at last week’s class, just because I use a MacBook Pro and have an iPhone. I can’t imagine someone with a Dell laptop and a Samsung Blackjack being accused of being a Microsoft fanboy. (Unless they also had a Zune…) My protestations that I also run both Windows and Ubuntu Linux on my MacBook didn’t seem to help.

Platform choices driven by ideology are bad for the industry and bad for the customer. So are platform choices driven by fashion. If your iPhone is driving you nuts, there are plenty of other phones in the sea and I, for one, won’t look down on you.

Of course, I very much think of my current car as a fashion accessory, so maybe I’m just not being honest with myself about computers and phones…

I suspect that the iPhone’s ultimate achilles heal is an aspect that you didn’t mention. It is week in the area of generativity”. Of course, it has always been the Apple way. They will continue to have a loyal and cult-like following but ultimately, I predict they will realize a low market share because they restrict innovation. They have a kill switch.

Is it possible that their applications will keep pace with the generative force of an open platform? I doubt it. It is a phenomenon that we have seen proven over and over again since the beginning of the information age. A more open environment results in more compelling products.

I agree with you 100% about the iPhone. My prediction is that it will open up gradually to survive, and indeed, the recent dropping of the developer NDA for the iPhone shows at least a semblance of understanding on Apple’s part. Jobs arguing for open DRM on iTunes last year does too.

However, I disagree with you when you say it’s always been the Apple way. When it comes down to it, I don’t see very much difference right now between Microsoft and Apple in terms of general openness — neither one has enough to satisfy me. Still the Mac platform, is at this point more open because of its close interoperability with *nix platforms. But the first Macs were much black boxes at a time when MS-DOS was practically wide open. Maybe Jobs thinks its necessary to totally control significantly new user experiences until they have been sufficient shaken down. Or maybe he’s just repeating mistakes that helped drive him from his company in ’85… We’ll see.

Good point Mark, you are definitely not the only ones with the generativy/open-source question. Ideologically, I disagree with the closed environment of Apple, but in practice some of the open-environments are more time-consuming than closed-environments and I don’t necessarily want to invest lots of times with every gadget I have. I wonder if it’s enough for Apple to keep up the promise of quality-control?

Additionally, open-source initiatives are finding ways to integrate with the iPhone (e.g. WordPress for iPhone) and Apple is not close ALL avenues. Note that open-source platforms seem to also follow the cult model really well.

Brook, I do the declare my apple-fangirl status, I love their stuff because they are just beautiful and easy-to-use, really an icon of user-interaction design. Without Apple we would still be typing /commands on DOS!

I won’t argue that Apple and Microsoft are fairly similar in their reticence to open up. I proudly wear the nickname of “IP Commie” in the halls of Microsoft. Actually, I think of myself as the polar opposite of an “IP Commie”. I see myself as an “IP Free Marketeer” but everybody has a right to their opinion. (-:

I do hope as Adriana points out that developers, even of open source code, have a place on the iPhone and the kill switch is really just a dead man’s switch to protect against some monster-zombie that is introduced into the system. Unfortunately, I’m more cynical than that. I also hope that Windows Mobile moves to a more open position and provides even more access to the OS. We’ll see.

iPhones are pretty. I’m easily pleased….maybe low standards, I like the Blackjacks too. What I really want though is an open and generative marketplace. People will pay for a great product and developers will contribute to an open environment. I dare to think we can have both.

Egads. My last post was one typo after another. I’m very impressed that anyone could read any sense into it.

Interesting conversation, though. I love good user experience (and I like being paid to deliver it), but I also demand good utility. In my years of mucking around with computers, that balance has swung back and forth between different companies a bit.

Maybe that’s a reason I like Web work — there actually is a standard that you can measure Web browsers against to see if they’re doing what they’re supposed to do. Takes the fanboy factor out of it.

Thinking about the control thing, I wonder how MS’s PR would be these days if, for example, they’d built a kill switch into Exchange allowing Redmond to stop all instances of Outlook from spreading viruses as they were identified. Would they be seen as Big Brother, or would they be hailed for proactive security measures?